Improbable
by The.Guiding.Star
Summary: In the life before, they did not even know each other. In this life, they have almost nothing in common. Experiences of loss and second chances draws two broken souls together, and in trying to comfort themselves, they find each other.
1. I

If you think 4x8 could work, read on. If you think 4x8 would never work, read on. My Secret Santa pal asked for a 4x8, and if you've seen the wonderful picture on DeviantArt, you'll see why.

I love that picture, so I was more than ready to go along.

So whatever your reasons for being here…

…..Read on.

* * *

In this time of war, in this place of death, love is a winter seed, dormant in the ground.

Waiting for anything, even a drop of hope-giving water, to help it begin to sprout.

They could not feel love. Love was overpowered by anger and fear and courage and amazement and wonder.

But it is still there.

Waiting.

Patiently waiting for the right time.

* * *

God has a funny way of bringing soul mates together.

It is half a millennia after the Great Decimation, the Communist war that nearly brought the world to a premature end.

Humans now walk the earth. The gases have cleared and bodies have long been buried away. The world is in a somewhat stable harmony. Communism is a thing of history, and ten museums stand in honor of the Nameless Scientist and his efforts for his attempt to improve the world, as well as the Rebels and the Innocents that eased his final days.

One of those museums stand in what was once known as Canada.

And here our story begins.

A wealthy old judge (and a former war veteran), embittered by the death of his wife, keeps himself shielded from the world in his mansion, high in the mountains, with one sole man for companionship.

His brother-in-arms lives in a peaceful suburban village in the valley, working at a repairs shop creating and tinkering with his grandson, the last surviving member of his family.  
The grandson shuts himself away from interacting with others, locking pieces of his heart in his chest, like a once-trusting bird in a cage. His useless left eye, damaged and melted over with flesh, and his lashing behavior, keeps help away from his grandfather's shop.

Yet their recent employee, a young, hazel-eyed Italian, the same age as the grandson, hasn't been driven away. He claims the bills of his former home require that he work, yet he cannot deny that something, deep within his psyche, ties him to the one-eyed grandson with his sensitivity and his snippy, angry mask.

The grandson usually warns his grandfather's employee about an eighteen-year-old man that bothers him by jumping upon him and claiming that he is his friend, and that they must 'warn the others'. Visions plague the man's mind, some of them happy, wonderful dreams; however, the majority of these visions torment him as he sees a much older man, popular to the public, reassembling…something…he feels endangers everyone.  
Ever since his grandmother died, around the age of ten, his parents have given him medicine in the hopes that he will improve and become 'normal'. There is no money for inks, or even paints, so the young man uses his own warm, crimson life essence to materialize the visions in the hope someone believes.

Many will not heed his warnings.

But there are those that see the signs and believe.

One of them is a beautiful, free-spirited woman, and an old friend of the Italian's. The two friends, from the ages of six, wrote pen pal letters from their respective homes in Canada and Italy until family complications with the Italian took a great emotional toll, and her letters to him were answered by wordless flowers. She's kept every flower, pressed and kept in a velvet-lined metal box, and demanded no answers from him because she understood. She left her family in order to make their lives easier, as she is an albino with very special, very expensive, needs that nearly drained her family's savings. The law now allows people with learning disabilities to attend school, but the reprieve came too late for her.

But not for her siblings.

A pair of fraternal boy-girl twins were once human test subjects in a morally corrupt think tank. Kidnapped as infants (the mother was told her babies were stillborn) because of their intelligence and genetic makeup, they were injected, pricked, tazed, tortured, forced to run and move like guinea pigs to test the creations of the think tank.

An employee there, a hulking, massive guard, collected enough information to turn in his employers into the government. Law enforcement officers surrounded the area and dragged out the scientists of the think tank, and the test subjects (all children) were escorted to safer places. The twins were the 'favorites' of the scientists', but when the police tried to find the man to thank, he, his official records, and his bulk were long gone.

The traumatized children had to be placed into families all over the world that would be given money to care for them, and the twins were taken to Canada. Upon a social outing, the pair was mobbed and their escorts disarmed; they had intentions to dump the twins into a sex trafficking ring. The albino, according to eyewitness accounts, came out of "freakin' nowhere and beat the shit out of the dumbasses".  
After a week of getting to know each other, the twins warmed up to her and requested that she become their legal guardian. The woman was nineteen upon adopting the twins as her siblings, and for three years' worth, they have been secretly living in a library abandoned before night on the beliefs that a woman of great importance died there and haunts the library at night.

This story, however, does not concern the old judge.

The old inventor.

His one-eyed grandson.

Their Italian employee.

The psychologically disturbed young man.

The fierce albino.

Or her silent, studious little brother.

There are truths in this world even the cruelest of humans cannot deny.

One: Love is patient.

* * *

This is my Secret Santa gift for SayaMoonShadow of the 9 Forum.

And what better gift than the gift that keeps on giving? This started out as a one-shot, but my mind went crazy and the other human-punks got into the equation and, quite suddenly, this simple little one-shot became a dive into the souls of these two characters, and how this dive places them together.

Hope you like, my dearest Saya.

~The Chancellor


	2. II

Fair warning: Sensitivity between our two main characters, and lime-like descriptions of sex.

You people should have the sense to stay away if even the thought of 4 and 8 even remotely liking each other induces you to vomit.

Onward with the story. And keep an eye out for *'s.

* * *

"C'mon, light, dammit."

A man, like a human boulder, sits alone in a meadow of flowers, trying to light a cigarette.

He does not care that the match may fall in the grass and set the field on fire.

A puff of smoke.

A sigh of satisfaction.

The afternoon sun is blocked by a cloud. Many clouds lazily drift over a violet-tinged sky.

He lays in the grass and watches the clouds, puffing away upon the white cylinder. There is no old man Rogers yelling insults at him. Just an empty meadow and the Tria* air and the fluffy clouds and the cigarette slowly taking its effect on him.

There's a cloud that looks like a Douglas fir. Another one looks like a dog.

The smallest cloud in the sky catches his eye. As he watches it, it uncurls into a little spiral, like a sprout from a seed.

A soft crunch in the grass distracts him. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a blue hood and dirty-blonde hair.

"You can come closer, you know. I'm not gonna bite."

His visitor comes to sit at his right.

One of the Twins. The girl.

"Don't you wanna hang with your brother, Miss Ziamaer? Or Miss Areli? C'mon, even Master One-Eye's a better influence than me."

Her head snaps around to look at him. The hood falls off, and her hair is lit at the ends by the unveiling sun. He finds she looks…untouchable.

_Do not insult Milo_, she warns with her hands. _And my brother is cataloging Noah's work_._ Areli took Salvatore somewhere, probably apartment jumping if the ducks in the Mata pond weren't hungry._

He gestures to her with the cigarette in a curled finger.

_I will not be warded off so easily, Mr. Guarin. I am sixteen, and I've seen seven different kinds of drugs being dealt at school, five different forms of alcohol being consumed outside of school grounds, a loaded gun on my principal's desk, six classmates with knives in their bags, nine classmates with sexual pornography hidden inside of their books and on their laptops, and I've walked in on at least three couples on the verge of having sexual intercourse. Don't think for one minute that your little cigarette will keep me away._

A chuckle escapes on a puff of smoke.

"You must think you're so tough, so smart. Look, I'm not fucking around. When people smoke shit like this, they do stupid things, and----"

_Then I will be the one that keeps you from doing anything stupid._

"Notice that I'm a lot bigger and stronger than you? I could kill you in under a minute if I tried."

She responds by slipping a chain from her sleeve and unraveling it for him to see. The chain has a ring, and he hears one solid _thump _after another as she throws it back and forth in her hands.

_The chain is less fragile than it appears._

He glances at her signing hands (since when did she had silver nails?), then at her golden eyes, daring him to test her. For all her smarts and all her silence, she was stubborn.

"You're just like her", he mutters, flopping back onto the grass.

Another foggy puff dissipates into the air.

He now wishes she never came. She looks like someone he loves.

Loved.

Loves.

A puff of smoke clouds his vision for a second. When it cleared, her hands were already above his face.

_Like who?_

"None of your damn business", he retorts. "Go the hell away."

_I won't tell anyone._

"'Course you won't. Your hands will all the talking."

The cigarette is suddenly in one of her hands.

"Dammit! Give it here!"

Despite his size, he's kept away with a leg. She holds the burning cig at arm's length.

_You know smoking is deleterious, right?_

"The damn cigarettes, the whole pack---it was a gift, and it's mine to do whatever the hell I want with it!"

She glares at him, pressing her lips into the flattest of lines.

_You're addicted_, she signs harshly, throwing down the cigarette and stubbing it out beneath her shoe. _And to think, I thought someone like you was different.  
_  
"Hey, it's one of the few privileges Master Rogers will let me have! What, I gotta say 'please' for you to hand it over?! Right now, I'm taking a fucking break!"

_You're also addicted, _she adds again, tucking his whole pack of clove-tobacco cigarettes in her back pocket.

"…………….I've been addicted to worst shit before."

_Such as…?_

"…Crack, weed, acid, ecstasy, atrovent; so many different kinds of drugs. Shit like you wouldn't believe."

The toughness is gone. She sees his eyes, she sees his face, and feels sympathy for him.

"What, now I have to give you a rap sheet and a list of the women I slept with?"

The sunlight illuminates dark circles in his face. There are tiny red veins in the whites of his eyes. His skin is a sunken, sallow pale with brown patches scattered all over.

She doesn't remember him being so close.

She sees his stormy gray eyes glance downward. The feel of fingers along her waist is alien; she knows he's looking for his pack of cigarettes.  
A strange thought suddenly floods her mind.

His eyes are familiar.

As quickly as he closed in on her, he is now a good meter away, obsessively puffing on another lighted cig.  
He looks at her. She is still kneeling in the grass. Her rose-colored lips still hang slightly open.

He had expected her to slap him, or hit him in the face with that chain of hers, or something. For Pete's sakes, he had (unintentionally) touched her ass just to get a pack of cigarettes.  
He distinctly remembers Areli mentioning that the twins hadn't grown up normally. Forced to be human guinea pigs for some fucked-up government scientists. Maybe she was taught not to defend herself if people touched her. Maybe those scientists touched her because she couldn't fight back or scream out.

The thought angered him.

"You're sixteen?"

She shakes her head in that familiar trance-breaking way and nods.

"You're pretty…mature…for your age."

He gulps down a puff of smoke. Already he could feel the tobacco gradually taking its effect.

"I'm twenty-five. I was twenty-two when we first met."

_I don't remember._

He sighs.

"Remember a think tank, and a freakishly large, quiet guard."

It come backs to her in a rush.

She remembers being thirteen, being lied to that, once again, she couldn't go out because there was a nuclear war outside and that the think tank was a safe bomb shelter for her and her brother.  
Guarin's face was familiar because, although he had dressed like a think tank guard, no one could lie to the children about his time in the think tank. They told her and her brother that he was a soldier ordered to be a guard within the think tank, to protect it should anything go bad.  
The guard was as silent as they were, but she and brother saw him occasionally sneak documents and flash drives into his clothes. The twins caught him once at a computer, typing something about a violation of human rights in the think tank, but as they were mute, they made no sounds and so avoided being seen.

Three months later, many men in black uniforms with gold badges and hats with rounded tops raided the think tank. They spoke oddly, with a lilt in their voices*, and took the children away into open-trunk trucks. As they were riding away, watching their first real sunrise, Treston told her that he saw Guarin sneaking away in a helicopter.

He watches as she stares into the clouds, the wheat-colored strands blowing in the clean air, lit afire by a four o'clock sun. Her eyes shone like the golden knob on Master Roger's cane.

The color reminded him of fine Canadian whiskey; smooth yet strong.

Her eyes suited her.

"You look so much like her. The woman that got me the job, I mean. My God, she was wonderful. Except her eyes were big, brown doe eyes."

He takes an unsteady puff, looking heavenward. She inches closer to him, crawling on her hands and legs. He notices the chain has vanished in her sleeve, and unlike her furious zipping movements when he tried to make her go away, she signs with slower, gentler hands.

_Tell me, if it's not too much trouble._

After a heartbeat, he agrees, and she lies in the grass, tucking her hands behind her head with one leg folded on another.

He unfolds an elaborate story of a young, foolish drug addict from a Skid Row* that tried to rob a woman who showed him kindness by giving him a place to sleep, food to eat, and helping to treat his addictions. Hell, she was the reason he stopped. He used his gunman skills as an international aid officer to raid brothels and sweatshops, and learned seven new languages. He fell in love with her, and she was so excited when he went on his first solo mission, a raid upon a think tank in England. He then came home with the intention to propose to this woman. Her name was Jezabel.

"…I had everything planned out, you know, I mean, nothing flashy or showy….and…and….the ring, it wasn't a fancy ring you know, not something Italian-made or anything like…damn Salvatore with his damn Italian citizenship and damn advantages….I mean, I knew she liked Italian and shit but God she she the ring…"

She sees that the tobacco is twisting his mind. He talks clearly at intervals, but won't stop mumbling. The cigarette is, now, practically glued to his mouth, and one obsessive swallow after another makes her clench her chain protectively.

"…And I don't know how the hell it happened, but…one day I came home, to our apartment, 'cause we were savin' for a nice house in the Hawaiian Islands, but then I came home….and…and…she……good God…she was screwing our landlord. Yeah, naked and riding him up and down and he was grabbing her ass and screaming and then he saw me and screamed and she turned around and tried to cover her breasts and it all went down a fucking hill after that….  
I dropped the engagement plans and pawned the ring and I tied myself to a rock and, stupid me, tried to commit suicide. I washed up on the shore of some godforsaken lake, and I was found by none other than Mr. Eamon Rogers himself. He was taking a stroll the morning he found me, and he took me inside his mansion to get warm and get dressed; guess he didn't want any dead guys on his routine morning path. As I got better, he asked me how the hell I ended up on the lakeshore, so I told him every damn detail. That one day turned into a week and that week turned into a month and before you know it, I knew enough to become his butler. I mean, we've both lost the women we loved to something and our lives sucked 'cause of those things, so I guessed he kept me all this time 'cause of that."

She watched him, taking in every emotion that swept over his face, the ones he let her see and the ones he tried to hide. Smoke hovered around his head, the grey in his eyes suddenly looked wider, and he began rambling on about the woman that broke his heart.

And then, quite suddenly, she felt him stroking her cheek.

"God, Jezebel, I've missed you. Just as beautiful as ever; you haven't aged a bit, yeah? And---"

Without thinking, she let the chain slide from her arm, unraveling into its full length. It curves in midair and glints before the weighted end swings down on his forehead with one clean blow. The cigarette flies out of his mouth, and she catches it in her bare hand. She feels a burst of pain and slowly uncurls her fingers to reveal ash and a crumpled cigarette and a small burn; hypnotized by the thin trail of blood, she watches a crimson jewel travel down her wrist until a dull groan brings her back to reality.

He is face down in the slightly waving grass, a fallen boulder. He is not moving.

_Oh, no. I just killed him.  
_  
She slowly walks over and prods him with a timid foot. Still no movement.

But a small sound of sobbing can be heard. His back shakes a bit. Gathering all her strength in her arms and hands she turns him on his back and finds he's crying now, tears pouring shamelessly down his ruddy cheeks and his clenched teeth as he tries to suck in oxygen and nearly chokes on his salty tears. Two trails of fluid dribble from his nose into his mouth and over his blunt chin and he knows he looks disgusting but doesn't care.

"Even people that look like Jezebel want to hurt me……...except, God, I loved her and everything, I loved her more than anything…I swore I'd apologize to all the girls I slept with, and stop dealing drugs, and give up smoking, and drink only at parties, and all that went to waste, I put my heart and my blood and my tears and my life into her hands and she threw it aside and I didn't want to leave her but God she didn't even want to take me back didn't even beg for a second chance just told me to suck it up and cope like what I did with my addictions.  
part of my mind so dark I wouldn't even be able to get addicted even if I tried. But you're right I backslid and fucked up big time and I'm trying to make myself better but sometimes trying gets tiring and God I'm sorry I tried to molest you even if I really wasn't trying to molest you or anything I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…….."

He begins biting his lip, so as not to suddenly burst out with idiotic sobs, and it bleeds and begins mixing with his salty tears and his runny mucus and the whole mess flows off his face freely.

It's not as if she could (literally) say something to lift his spirits. She takes out his pack of cigarettes and tries to offer him one, but he slaps it out of her hand. She notices a square of fabric in his front pocket, so she pulls it out and dabs at his face with it.

He feels her arms around him. They seem to be long enough to encircle only his neck, but he understands and, gently as possible, wraps his arms around her whole body.

As the sun dips to its five o'clock position, he smells tea leaves and Quarta* rain and the clouds before a rainstorm. Yet rain wouldn't come for another month, and clouds bloom white against a fuschia-orange sky, and there weren't tea leaves for miles.

Then he realizes the smell is coming from the girl that embraces him.

There are truths in this world even the cruelest of humans cannot deny.

Two: Love is kind.

* * *

Any of you grossed out yet?

Then why are you people still here?

For any readers that are actually liking the story so far, you may have noticed that certain words or word groups have asterisks (*) next to them. A brief explanation:

*1) The police that wear black uniforms and speak oddly are Britons. The twins were taken away from their family somewhere in England.

*2) 'Quarta' literally means 'four' in Latin, and in the new world, is also the name for the fourth month of the year (April)

Hope I still have some readers out there.

~The Chancellor


	3. III

Hello there.

I nearly forgot to mention in the last chapter:

LANGUAGE.

Words like, "Fuck", "Shit", and "Hell" are used in excess by our very own human boulder.

And a large section of this chapter features a naked girl. No, she's not doing anything to herself, nor is she going to do anything to anyone else, you perverts. You'll know who she is once you get there.

Look out for asterisks (*).

And forward we go.

* * *

The next day, he wakes up in his elaborate bedchamber to find her sitting on his chest.

"HOLY FUCK!!!"

_Good morning_, she signs good-naturedly, making the motion of laughing before hopping off. He expects that to be the end of the joke, except she runs back in three seconds with one of those breakfast-in-bed trays. There's a plate of wheat pancakes with berries layered in-between all smothered with maple syrup, a large cup of black coffee, a sticky cinnamon roll, and a little dish of yogurt. His silverware weighs down a folded napkin sailboat.

She even put one of those vases with…is that one of Master Rogers' quills?...a large red feather in it.

_Are you not hungry? _

She watches him eye his breakfast with a funny expression. In the cold sunlight of the early morning, his eyes shine silver; for the first time, she sees his eyes are grey with pale green flecks radiating outwards from his pupil, like a star. His lower lip is puffy and red, but a scab's formed over the bite in it. She notices his lips are full, wide red lips, and an equally red tongue laps over them as he anticipates the taste of his breakfast. His nose is large and pointed at the end, and his face has an interesting cleft in the chin. His straight black hair, usually slicked into a natural curl in the front, hangs around his face in short layers.

He looks much better when he's not smoking.

He wanted to ask her how she got the feather, and who cooked his breakfast, but before he could even open his mouth, her hands were already signing away.

_Don't worry about Mr. Roger's quill; we will return it. As for your breakfast, that would be Mr. Faraday's cooking; and rest assured, my friends and I had breakfast as well. _

She stopped for just a bit.

"Hey….what's up? What's wrong?"

_Nothing, it's just…I volunteered to bring you breakfast this morning because I wanted you to know that I forgive you for…yesterday's disaster. I know you were intoxicated when you touched me…I wanted to ask your forgiveness as well. My chain could have killed you if I had struck the wrong spot, and I did it out of self-defense._

He stared at her with disbelieving silver eyes.

"You're kidding, right? Self-defense doesn't need to be forgiven, really. And I, if that blow wasn't for me…I…I was impressed, with the way you used a normally harmless chain as a weapon."

She hesitates only the slightest before lifting her hands.

_Thank you. _

"You too… Zia. It's okay if I call you Zia, yeah?"

Her rose lips curl into a peaceful smile.

_Only if I may call you Guarin._

_

* * *

_

Night has fallen upon the Sanctuary.

She decides to sneak off by herself to swim in a cool, aspen lake near the Sanctuary, Mr. Rogers' mansion.  
The walk isn't so far away, and Areli tells her in addition to the cedars and other foliage concealing the lake, she'll love the privacy and calmness of swimming naked staring at nothing but a wide sky (although she knew someone like Areli would 'skinny-dip' for the freedom and potential risk of getting caught without one's clothes on).  
She was reluctant until Tres, Sal, and (gasp!) even Milo recommended that it would be good for her. Tres added the different kinds of plants and insects she'd see on the way, and before anyone could blink twice, she was out the door with a towel and a camera, photographing every single flower, leaf, or flying, hopping thing that caught her attention.

The full moon lights her path. She lopes the camera strap in her belt loop and runs freely through the forest. Leaves and flowers are bent beneath her shoes, and the crisp evening air fills her lungs, and despite the dull burn in her legs, a strange but welcome feeling pounds through her arteries.

This must be what Areli feels like when she runs in the night; free, absolutely free.

The first thought she has when she nears the lake is a mental scolding to herself for being persuaded by boys. Her second thought admires the enchantment of the little forest.

The lake is small, but the still, dark water beckons to her. A flat gray rock juts out from the ground, and she places her camera and carefully lays her towel upon it. She pulls her feet out of her shoes and peels off each sock, testing the feel of grass and wildflowers under her feet.

Her hoodie, then her jeans, her camisole, her bra, and, finally, her underwear is laid out on the rock. Her chain is hidden beneath her clothes. She stares at her reflection in the mirror-like surface of the water, the slight curves along her sides, and her cream-colored skin stretched over her thin legs and slightly pudgy stomach and sloping shoulders. There are minute red bumps along her cheeks, and her mouth is pink and puffy, and her gold eyebrows have many hairs. She cups her breasts; they seem to be the size of pears and they feel like the pillows in the Sanctuary, all soft as she lets them fall back on her chest. She touches her hair, her head filled with thick strands of gold and brown, then she glances down at her nails.

Silvery, like the moonlight, like Guarin's eyes. She folds her hands like the Chinese princesses of old: like holding a white lily, all pure silver fingernails lined up together. For the first time in her life, ever since her release from the think tank, she felt what it was like to feel….attractive…visually appealing.

They told her in the think tank that admiring one's physical appearance was vanity, and vanity was wrong and would distract her from making 'helpful' things.  
They didn't allow her and her brother to do things like this.

The cuts and the stitched wounds and the bruises are gone, but little scars remain. Along her sides, down her legs, between her thighs, underneath her bust, at the back of her neck, upon her hands and shoulders.  
She was pretty in an ugly way, she supposed.

She wondered if Areli ever felt that…prettiness…that, once in a while, she'd stare at her milk-white form in a mirror and her layered silvery hair beaded with feathers, feel her wide lips and admire the blue of her color-changing eyes.

She knows Areli is not vain and will not spend her life in front of a mirror; she imagines Salvatore verbally stumbling over compliments and ways to tell her sister he found her beautiful, and the image warms her heart.

She does not know why.

Heh. That image came out of nowhere.

She holds her breath and, with no hesitation, dives into the mirror-smooth indigo water. The cold swallows her, arctic darkness on all sides and she kicks and strokes her arms down, down, down and it makes her go up, up, up and the cold spits her out into the air and a midnight blue sky sprinkled with stars.  
She sighs in bliss, pushing her wet hair back. Now she understood why even Milo, with all his false sarcasm and icy shell, would have enjoyed the water and the feeling of it rolling over one's naked body.

"I highly suggest you don't turn around."

Her first instinct is to scream, and her mouth opens but no sound comes out. She crosses her arms over her chest and turns around.

It's him.

"My God, didn't I just tell you **not** to turn around?! It's bad enough I volunteered to make sure nothing happened to you, and I'm going to guess you're fully naked…"

She nods. He grimaces and looks away.

"You don't even have your chain with you. You could be swiped off by, I dunno, sick-minded, horny campers and I wouldn't even know until it was too late 'cause you can't scream…"

She dips into the water so that it comes up to her neck.

_For a butler, you seem to be uncomfortable around naked people. Have you not seen a naked woman?_

His eyebrows lift in an instant.

"Only Jezabel, and only once, and only while she was taking a shower."

She wants to slap herself sore.

_Oh. I see._

"Yeah…."

He sits in the foliage of wildflowers and emerald green leaves. He is bigger than the rock her clothes are on; he looks like a boulder wearing a chef's outfit. He watches her as she swims out farther, then floats upon her back. She looks completely at peace, and he tries not to notice anything suggestive as he considers pulling out a cigarette to kill time and he remembers her recent comments about his habit.

"Did'cha mean what you said?", he calls out to her, and she swims towards him to a viewable distance.

_About what?_

"Yesterday. About me being…different. You mean size-wise, yeah?

_I meant your personality, who you are inside of that enormous body and supposedly illiterate, simple mind. You seem so gentle, like you don't want to hurt others. How do you handle Mr. Rogers and his foul, antisocial behavior?_

He stands up and looks for something in the ground.  
"He's not an asshole inside-out, you know? He once loved someone but she couldn't….she couldn't stay, so to speak."

_You never did elaborate upon the subject of his past._

_"I'd rather not…"_

But he looks into her eyes. They are wide open with curiosity, two golden coins innocently begging for another story.

_Please? I'd like to know whatever I can about my new friends._

Normally, he wouldn't bat an eye at such a request. People could be so evil, so ignorant; people could be such gossips.

But with one look at her, he knew she'd keep her hands in her pockets. She would keep any secret and carry it within her conscience until she died. He had torn himself open and unraveled his troubles and agony to her because there were times he couldn't handle it and she had just happened to be there. She understood why he smoked and why he remained loyally by Master Rogers' side those three years.

He finds a smooth rock at the edge of the lake. She quickly picks up on his intention and swims out of the way, watching it skip over the already-rippling water. The moon hides behind a large cloud shaped like a flower.

She hears the story of a young soldier that became a general during a war, long before either he or she were born. Enemy forces captured him and tortured him for information, but he lasted until rescue teams came for him. As he tried to escape to ally grounds, the young general was bitten by an enemy hunting dog in the left shoulder. A young tanker saw him, shot the dog in the leg, and carried his general on his shoulders to safety.

The young tanker stepped upon a land mine and ended up losing his right leg thigh down. The young general's bitten shoulder became infected and his arm had to be amputated. For days, his legless companion watched him hallucinate and groan in agony. The general thought the woman taking care of him was an angel and married her.

_Did he regret it?_

"You kidding me? She loved him and he loved her. Do you remember that portrait of the lady in the living room? Yeah, that was her; Lady Kristina was married to Master Rogers for 'bout fifty-five years then…passed away…some kind of disease. And yeah, after she died, I guess it messed 'im up so bad he locked himself away in the Sanctuary, and did was Milo does: act as much of an asshole as possible and hope anyone who wants to hurt you fucks off. 'Cept Master Rogers is doin' a better job of it than Milo."

She sucks in a deep breath and submerges herself into the chilled water, hooking her foot under a rock and closing her eyes, trying to imagine being Milo: feeling nothing but biting cold, seeing nothing but frightening darkness, denying himself the very thing he needed to protect himself from the unforgiving elements of his trauma (as one would hold their breath under water to protect themselves from whatever's on the surface). She felt all the more sorry for him as she floated back to the surface, wishing she could feel his pain, so he wouldn't feel so alone. A rush of mild air brushes her outstretched hands, and she begins to sign, knowing that he can see them.

_Milo is not meant to be cruel and apathetic. He's meant to care for other people, to…guide people…to be…better. I can't think of fitting words to describe him._

"He's also worries too damn much; speaking of being worried, I wonder if anyone's noticed we're gone? No sirens, no signal flares, which means someone hasn't panicked and called in the mounties*…yet….I think you should get out of the water now; unless you want to—what the FUCK?!?!....."

The moon had come out of hiding, and its silvery light illuminated an outline of her naked body. Water dripped off every revealing dip and curve as she egressed the water. He jerked backwards and fell flat on his back. She ran over, arms crossed over her chest, and looked him in the face.

Good Lord, Miss Areli's sister had breasts.

"Put on some fucking clothes before your crazy, pale, adoptive sister has a fucking reason to hand me my ass on my silver platter!!!", he screeches, getting up.

An upset expression settles into her face.

_I just got here! And I was faring wonderfully until you showed up! I had some amazing epiphanies and I felt beautiful and made memories tonight, and then you had to come in here and I've completely lost my privacy! Why don't you come back, maybe ten minutes later, when I'd be ready to go?_

He suddenly wanted to slap her, choke the ungratefulness out of her, shake her until he **heard** the word, "Stop!!!" from her rose-colored lips. He didn't even want to come down here and guard her; he guarded Master Rogers with his scathing insults and that should've been it but NO! He also had to guard this stranger nine years his junior; he wanted right then and there to get up, walk away, and leave her to the mercy of the night and the forest's dark surprises.

Instead, he punched her.  
An unknown fury gripped him and his sense of self-control and curled his right hand into a fist that sent her flying into the gravel shore of the lake. There was no amusing mental slow-mo of her fall, and when he blinked and the realization of what he had done hit him, she was sprawled in the cold gritty pebbles naked as a newborn babe, her straight, gold-brown hair a threadbare curtain over her face.

But her honey-gold eyes stares through her hair-curtain, burning a hole into his head. Then the rest of her locks fall back on her shoulders and he sees a large, dark, crescent shaped wound on her face. A line of crimson flows from her nose and blooms upon her upper lip. Her bottom lip has a little open cut and a thinner stream of blood begins to seep down her chin.

He glances down at his large, boxy hands in horror. Not a spot of red ski, not a shot of pain, to compensate for her visible wounds. He tries to keep his eyes on her hands. There was no hatred, no negativity in her eyes when she was getting up; God, he didn't even want to see her face.

_Are you better now? Is that all?_

Was she kidding?

He swallows his shame and forces himself to look at her square in the face.

"Aren't….aren't you gonna tell your sis? Master Rogers? Don't you want some kind of revenge?"

_Revenge is for the purposeless._

She turns and kneels in the gravel, washing her face by the slowing fading light of the moon. She shakes slightly, but shows no sign of pain except sucking on her busted lip. Her hair has dried a little bit and now hangs in slight waves over her shoulders. Her back is milky pale.

And however inappropriate it was at the moment, he thought she looked…beautiful.

Finished, she walks over to her clothes. Piece by piece, a passionless, reverse striptease is performed before his eyes. She wraps her hair with the towel, then turns to look up at him. She is barely more than half his size, but being superior in intellect and self-defense, with those gleaming gold eyes of hers, the wind blows twice as cold against his hands and his lips and his eyeballs.

_No one needs to know of this. I will tell any curious souls that I fell while taking pictures._

Gold and silver clash one last time.

Then, with a turn of her shoe in the grass, she is gone. Leaving him speechless.

'An eye for an eye' was the philosophy, the criteria, the number one rule of his old life.

It's all he seems to know. One thing that makes everything clear. He's loyal to Master Rogers because the old man saved his life. Areli beats the shit out of touchy-feely perverts in the cities because they try to publicly grope her. Even old man Faraday needed a metal leg to replace the one he lost in the war.

He knows when she wakes up in the morning with a swollen right eye and cheek, she'll want revenge, compensation, restitution of some sort.

All humans do.

All females do.

He readies himself to pay of the price, berating himself, scolding himself, punishing himself once again for his loss of self-control.

He stands there until the moon completely conceals itself in the clouds.

There are truths in this world even the cruelest of humans cannot deny.

Three: Love keeps no record of wrongs.

* * *

There was only one asterisk for this chapter. If you do not know what mounties are, they are the informal term for Canadian police that ride horses, wear these awesome hats, and wear red tops.

Yeah….

I had a real inward battle when I described Zia's nakedness. She sees herself as pretty but feels that she would be considered ugly by society's criteria of large breasts, flawless skin, tiny waists and skinny tummies, and shapely butts.

I am not trying to make 4 ugly, just natural. To describe everyone in my stories with perfect hair and eyes and skin is not only ridiculous, but unrealistic. Like every good person, she is beautiful just the way she is.

Don't you agree?

~The Chancellor


End file.
